Venom
by Firestar9mm
Summary: Danny's thoughts on Sam turn to the soft and fluffy. Good thing she's carrying a vial of "poison" in her makeup bag...


**Author's Introduction:**

"I thought to myself, 'I'm writing a Danny Phantom fanfiction,' and then I thought, 'Oh God, it's getting worse.' "

I haven't seen a lot of this show, just enough to know I like it, so don't mind me if some things don't add up. Feedback is greatly appreciated.

I heart Danny Fenton.

On with the show.

* * *

_**Venom**_

A Danny Phantom fic by Serena (I am DROPPING that stupid 4 on my name, I don't care how many Serenas are running around this site).

* * *

Some boys were baseball players. Some boys were football players. Some boys were basketball players. Danny Fenton and Tucker Foley were girl-watchers.

"Check out the rear view on _that_ one," Tucker purred, watching a dark-haired coed walk down the hall in jeans that hugged the curves like a Formula One racer. "Survey says?"

"Baby got back," Danny agreed appreciatively, only to be caught in a half-nelson by his laughing friend and being subjected to a fist to the skull.

"Baby got _what?_ Could you _be_ any whiter, Ghost Boy?"

Danny laughed too—it _was_ funny, given the circumstances. Tucker didn't make up nicknames like that just because Danny's fair skin bruised easily. It had more to do with the fact that they spent the better part of their time now capturing truant spirits in a thermos.

Sometimes it was funny. Other times...

Sometimes Danny would stare at the thermos and hate it for not containing some sort of a liquid. Sometimes his head would hurt trying to remember what it was like to be a normal kid.

But he let Tucker tease him, grateful for the fact that he _had_ a friend to tease him.

Tucker let Danny go, messing up his friend's jet-black hair on purpose. "Come on, man, second quarter. See anything good?"

Danny scouted the hallway. Casper High was an excellent arena for girl-watching. Girls clustered in pastel flocks at the tables in the cafeteria and at their lockers, putting the final touches on their makeup or brushing clean, shining hair. They were a rather interesting species, fascinating to watch from afar, like Darwin watched the delicate finches on the Galapagos.

Right now a tall, butterscotch-skinned supermodel of a girl dropped her compact. A curse left her lipsticked mouth and she tucked a lock of short dark hair behind her ear as she knelt to retrieve it. The noise drew Danny's eyes to the fallen compact, and while his gaze was near the floor, he found something else he liked.

A pair of black combat boots was walking across the hallway. Danny was more interested in the smooth legs that were currently attached to the black boots. As his gaze followed their pale lusciousness upwards, he murmured appreciatively at the short plaid skirt that showcased them, and the hips that gave it such a breath-catching angularity. The smallest strip of midriff was visible between skirt and blouse, giving just enough to tease but no more, and so the eyes were drawn upward to nicely shaped breasts, moving with her breathing beneath her shirt.

Tucker followed Danny's ice-blue gaze, and interrupted with the horrified tone of a murder witness.

"_Danny_. That's _Sam_."

Danny's thought processes screeched to a halt. Raising his eyes to the girl's face, he realized with a jolt that Tucker was indeed correct—the girl he'd been staring at was none other than their resident punk rock princess, Samantha Manson. Horrified that his eyes had caressed his best friend in such a manner, he quickly locked them on her face and nowhere else.

Tucker's eyebrows were hiked higher than Sam's skirt. His mouth was hanging open slightly, as if he wasn't sure what to make of this turn of events. "With that egregious technical foul, I think it's safe to call it halftime."

Danny wanted to argue that it was an honest mistake—Sam _was_ pretty, and there was no getting around that. It was just a fact. He even thought her goth ensembles and cynical comments somehow made her even more attractive, because she wasn't afraid to be herself and meet the world face-first.

Of course, for every Danny Fenton who considered Sam a hero, there were ten other people who had no idea what to do with her. They were afraid of her warped worldview and her righteous rages, didn't know what to make of her nonconformism. Even he and Tucker didn't know how to deal with Sam some of the time, and they were her best friends.

Maybe that was why he and Sam got along so well. She was something of a halfa, herself—out of place here, there and everywhere.

"_Now_ what are you smiling at?" Tucker demanded nervously, jarring Danny from his thoughts.

Danny shook his head. "Nothing. Let's go say hi to Sam." He started walking towards his friend, who was trying to open her locker with the meticulous grace of a safecracker. It appeared to be stuck.

"Sure, let's go and tell her that your tongue hit the floor when you saw her in that skirt," Tucker threatened playfully.

"You do that and I will kidnap and sell you to Bolivian organ pirates," Danny threatened right back, only half as playfully.

Sam had her back to them, having finally wrestled her locker open. She was putting her books away one at a time, trying to stack them as neatly as she could.

Sam's locker, in Danny's opinion, was like Sam herself—a bunch of things that didn't seem to go together. Her books were stacked neatly, while her makeup lay scattered all over the shelves like casualties and her pictures were taped haphazardly all over the inside of the door along with signs that said things like "Thank You For Not Creating Drama" and "Save An Animal, Eat A Carnivore". Danny smiled at a picture of him pretending to stuff Sam into her locker. He remembered the day Tucker had taken it.

Each boy put a hand over one of Sam's heavily mascaraed eyes. "Guess who!" they said in unison.

Sam laughed. "It's Tuckerino and Danny the Friendly Ghost. I was wondering what you two were up to."

"We were girl-watching," Tucker said jovially, loving to offend Sam's feminist sensibilities whenever he could. "But Danny over here dropped the ball."

Danny widened his eyes at Tucker in a you're-so-dead look but said nothing. Luckily Sam fielded his fly, a disdainful look crossing her pretty face. "Drooling over Paulina again?"

Both boys looked surprised. Danny recovered first, realizing that she was unknowingly giving him a way out. "Uh...yeah...yes. Again."

Sam sniffed. "I don't know what you see in her, really."

Oh? That was interesting to know. Danny favored Sam with an eyebrow raise, but she had already turned back towards her locker and the magnetic mirror stuck to the door.

"Maybe it's that she doesn't wear a ton of makeup like those goth chicks," Tucker laughed as Sam slicked more liquid black eyeliner over her eyelids, which were already weighed down by her thickly mascaraed lashes. "Jeez, Sam. You're going to hurt yourself with that stuff."

Danny was paying more attention to something that the mirror's magnet was holding to the locker door—a newspaper clipping, the edges curling with age and exposure to school days. _Animal Rights Protest Turns Violent_, was the heading above the article. The picture was a little blurry, but you could see police officers trying to hold back a crowd of protesters. One was holding a handmade sign that said _Fur is murder_. One of the protesters was Sam—she was right up in the foreground of the picture, being manhandled by riot control. One of the officers had his nightstick out, and it was aimed at Sam's head. Danny remembered Sam coming in to school with a bandage the next day, and Tucker had teased her for getting knocked out in defense of animals instead of for "something cool like punching out a cop".

"Didn't that hurt?" Danny asked aloud now, reaching out to touch the grainy newspaper picture. "Getting hit, I mean."

"No way," Sam said, capping her liquid eyeliner. "It was worth it, anyway."

What a stupid question, Danny realized belatedly. Of course it must have hurt—she'd been hit with a billy club and knocked unconscious. But that was Sam, brushing it off because it was all in a day's work.

"You know, Sam, maybe your grades would be better if you'd quit trying to save squirrels from toxic waste," Tucker teased. "Do you know they probably test your precious makeup on animals?"

"Stop bothering her, Tucker," Danny said.

Both Tucker and Sam looked surprised at his show of support. Then Sam smiled. "Don't worry, Tucker, I make sure that all my stuff isn't tested on animals. And even if I couldn't save them from that, you'd probably just eat them anyway."

Tucker laughed. "Damn right." To Danny he said, "Calm down, Danny. Sam knows I'm just kidding. Don't you, Sam?"

Sam nodded. "It didn't hurt, Danny."

Did she mean getting knocked unconscious, or Tucker's teasing? He didn't know.

"Are you almost done making yourself look even deader than usual, Sam?" Tucker whined. "I'm hungry. Let's go get a burger."

"Just one more thing." Sam pulled a slim vial out of her bag. It looked like a perfume sample.

"What's that?" Danny asked.

Sam's face lit up with a grin worthy of the serial killer that shared her name. "It's lip gloss. It's called_ Venom_. It's got all these ingredients that sting your lips to make them look redder and fuller. It actually hurts to put it on."

"Say _what_?" Tucker asked. "That's _sick_, Sam. You're saying that stuff actually causes _pain_ to wear? How does it feel?"

"Pain is beauty, Tucker." Sam smirked. "It sort of burns a little. You know, it stings. That's why they call it Venom."

Danny sighed. "Oh, Sam. That is so...so _you_."

Sam turned to Danny with a quizzical look on her face. "What do you mean?"

Danny shook his head, his bangs flipping over his eyes. "Nothing, nothing."

"You're making that up," Tucker said, still stuck on the Venom gloss. "I know you're a little whacked, Sam, but that's weird even for you."

"Thanks," Sam said sarcastically, uncapping the vial. She brushed a little gloss over her index finger and motioned Tucker closer. "Here, I'll prove it." She smoothed the tiny bit of gloss over Tucker's lower lip. He tried to smack her hand away.

"Get away from me with that stuff, woman." He backed away, frowning. "See, nothing's happening anyw—"

As Danny and Sam watched, Tucker's facial expression blanked out, then was replaced by fear and horror before it ended ungracefully in disgust. "_Damn_, yo! That stuff _burns!_"

Danny and Sam collapsed into laughter as their friend took off down the hallway, scrubbing at his mouth with the back of his hand, looking for the nearest water fountain. "Damn, girl! What else do you have in that bag!" he yelled. "Get it off get it off get it off get it off..."

"Too funny," Danny said, watching people stare confusedly at Tucker.

"My turn," Sam said, using a tiny brush to slick some of the poison gloss over her own lips. Danny watched her, studying the shape of her mouth as she painted it with shine.

"Does it really hurt?" he asked.

Sam giggled, capping the vial. "Yeah, a little. It's cool, though. I mean, I can see why Tucker thinks I'm weird."

"He doesn't mean those things he says," Danny said. "He likes you, you know that. He just likes to bust people's chops."

"I know." Sam closed her locker and sighed, turning to him. "How do I look?"

"I can't take my eyes off you, Samantha Manson," he said in an overdramatic voice. "You are incredibly beautiful."

"Shut up, Fenton," she said, smacking him lightly on the shoulder. "Let's go catch Tucker before he calls Poison Control."

Danny grabbed her arm, keeping her beside him. "Wait. Don't I get to try your poison makeup?"

Sam's smile was lopsided. "You guys are in the weirdest moods today. You want to see if it stings?"

"Yeah," Danny said. "Why should Tucker have all the fun?"

Tucker was still screaming about "lunatics" somewhere down the hall.

Sam studied Danny carefully, as if she were waiting for the punch line. She looked almost as though she were expecting him to make fun of her like Tucker had, but then she nodded, as if in response to her own thoughts. "Okay. You ready, Danny?"

He smiled. "Lay it on me, babe."

"You asked for it." And then, instead of uncapping the vial again, she simply rose on her toes and pressed her lips to his. It was a tentative, gentle contact that shocked Danny way more than any stinging lip gloss would have. It was an almost chaste kiss, just the warmth of her mouth against his, lightly, as if she daren't press herself against him any harder. And then it was over and she stepped away from him, regarding his dazed expression. She didn't say anything, just raised her eyebrows waiting for his reaction, looking as though she wanted to smile.

Danny touched his lips, tentatively. Some of the gloss had remained on his mouth when she pulled away, and his lips were tingling, stinging, aching in a way that was strange and at the same time pleasurable. But he wasn't sure how much of that fire was from chemicals in the gloss and how much was just from Sam's kiss.

"Did that hurt?" Sam asked.

He felt a smile spread across his face, starting slow on one side and then spreading to the other. "No way," he said, and she returned his smile with one of her own.

Sam blushed suddenly, as if she weren't sure what to do now. "Come on, we'd better go find Tucker," she said. "He's probably plotting my death." She turned and started walking down the hallway. Danny remained still for a second, his fingers on his mouth once again, trying to memorize the feel of her lips on his.

Dash purposely knocked into Danny's shoulder as he passed, jarring Danny out of his pleasant thoughts and causing him to stumble a bit. His brows met in a frown over his blue eyes as Dash turned back to laugh at him.

"Hey, Fenton! Nice _lipstick_!" the taller boy jeered, continuing on his way down the hall.

Danny flushed, his hand covering his mouth. It was one thing to be embarrassed in front of Dash, but it was another to have this surprise moment with Sam threatened. He didn't want anyone to see the evidence of that kiss. That belonged to him and Sam alone.

And then everything was made all right again, by Sam's voice echoing down the emptying hall.

"Danny! Are you coming or what!"

His still-tingling lips curved in another smile, and Dash was forgotten. "Yeah, I'm coming. Wait for me, Sam."

* * *

**Author's Notes:**

Like I said, I know next to nothing about this show, so if I made any mistakes, I'm sorry. I just got the idea for this in class the other day (funny how inspiration comes out of untold suffering) and decided to go with it.

Venom lip gloss is real, by the way. I got it in Sephora and was so enchanted by the stinging sensation that I only wished I had some boy to kiss to share it with him. (giggles.)

Comments greatly appreciated, please be constructive, I heart Danny. All that good stuff. (smiles.)


End file.
